Shattered
by nipponophile
Summary: The Tenth Doctor's internal monologue at the end of 'The Next Doctor', as he stands outside reminiscing about his companions with the 'Eleventh' Doctor.
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me, but thanks to the BBC and RTD et all for bringing them alive._

**Shattered**

_They leave._

_Because they should._

_Or they find someone else._

_And some of them…some of them forget me._

_I 'spose in the end, they break my heart._

He screamed. And screamed. Louder than he could ever remember. As if, somehow, the loudness of a _Time Lord_ scream could reach out and pull her back into his arms.

Instead, he'd been left with the mocking whiteness of eternal separation, his heart still _feeling_ her, a tangible presence, suffocating under the logic, the reality that she was gone.

He had thought he would never, ever get over the pain. And in some ways, part of him never had. That part was still overwhelming when the next one came crashing into his life, a red and white whirlwind of franticness and fury.

Yet he couldn't bear to be alone, so he asked her to stay. She didn't.

Maybe the next one had been too soon. And he shouldn't have kissed her, because it hadn't meant _that_, his heart was still too raw and defiantly, stubbornly holding on to its pain as if _that_ could be the driving force of his existence.

He hadn't noticed her adoration and by the time he had it was too late and he knew that the end of their companionship was inevitable, even as it was poignantly sad, because she was a good person, and deserved better.

And then _she_ came back. Same red, less franticness and fury. More frenetic, perhaps. He'd been reluctant to let her in this time. But he was glad that he had. From the least promising of starts, she had proved to be the most equal of them all. Loud, yes, but brutally honest and brave, calling him on things the others wouldn't have dared, not to show him up but to draw out the compassion in his heart that he sometimes hid to protect it. The overwhelming of the past grew smaller and smaller, until it had tucked itself away in the deep depths, emptied of its power.

She made him laugh, she made him angry, she gave him comfort and she frustrated the heck out of him. She became his best friend, his everything, because she _had _everything he'd needed. To heal. To grow. To live. To love. And she had promised him forever.

Only when it was hopeless had he realised that he loved her, too, with every fibre of his being, a wretched knowledge that had torn at his insides as he condemned her to what she had been before. He had been unable and unwilling to contemplate a world without her in it. But, then, how could he have let her die? What kind of universe gave him only choices like that?

He closed his eyes, and saw hers, tear-filled and as blue as the eternal sky under which he'd wanted to stay, with her, until the end of time. And he realised that it was only _now_ that his heart had broken for the first time.


	2. Chapter 2

Short follow-up, and conclusion to, Shattered, so helps if you read that first.

None of the characters in the BBC's Who-verse belong to me.

**Shattered, again**

He tried to gather the shards, to understand, make sense, rationalise, _justify_.

After all, Rose had ended up with the Human Doctor. The almost-him. The one who _had_ told her he loved her.

He hadn't had to let her go. It would have been so easy to reach out and tell her the words she'd longed to hear, that he'd almost said on that beach long ago. But he couldn't. He hadn't.

Martha, too. Mickey shared her drive and her passion and so clearly reciprocated her love in a way that he had never been able to.

So they were happy. They got their happy endings. Because of him. Or in spite of him. The destroyer of worlds hadn't destroyed them.

So where was his happy ending?

He knew the answer before he'd even asked the question.

There was no happy ending for him, because there had been no happy ending for _her._

They were supposed to be each other's happy ending. That's what they deserved. At least, that's what _she'd_ deserved.

Instead, he'd destroyed her world, as a big thank you to her for saving all of them. Destroying his world in the process. His Time Lord consciousness screamed in agony that of the infinitesimal possibilities in all of existence, there hadn't been one for them.

Maybe _this_ is what the end of time, my time, looks like, he thought. Not a war or an intervoid cataclysm or even the end of reality. But the realisation of a shattered heart that can never be whole again.


End file.
